A roadside bomb west of Sheikh Zuweid in North Sinai exploded Sunday evening, leaving one army officer and three conscripts injured.
The soldiers were patrolling the area around Al-Tawil village, close to Qarm Al-Qawadis, when a bomb by the roadside exploded as an armoured military vehicle drove by, a representative from the military spokesman’s office said.
While the vehicle resisted the impact of the explosion, the soldiers inside were injured due to the pressure wave resulting from the blast. The force of the explosion knocked them off their seats resulting in injuries, which the spokesman described were minor.
The representative accused Sinai-based militant group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis for planting the bomb, using the former name of the militant group now known as ‘State of Sinai’.
In a separate development, ‘State of Sinai’ posted 14 photos between Sunday evening and Monday morning on its main Twitter account, showcasing its members allegedly engaged in combat with the armed forces.
While the photos show masked men holding automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), it is unclear what the intended targets were. Other photos feature heavily armed masked men riding on pick-up trucks.
All vehicles are painted in a shade of light brown that is similar to the colour of sand. The side windows are painted as well.
The colouring of the vehicles seems intended to make it harder for helicopters and planes to detect them from the sky, though it does make them particularly conspicuous at the ground level.
Three additional photos show a group of masked men all dressed in black standing next to a carefully arranged display of heavy weapons spread on the ground in front of them.
The military spokesman called the photos an Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis’s “fabrication”. They could have been taken in deserts in Iraq or Syria, or may have been taken during the turmoil in 2011, he said.
Daily News Egypt found no visual evidence in the photos to determine whether they had been taken in Egypt or not.
The group posted photos last week showing its members handing out thin envelopes allegedly containing money to Rafah residents, displaced by the authorities to establish the buffer zone along the Gaza border. It was the first time the militants claimed to be providing a “social service”.
